Sept. 10, 2007 issue - Last week, a U.S. senator's 27-year congressional career crashed and burned and his life unraveled in public ignominy, and a presidential candidate announced his disgust in a way that did him no credit. The U.S. attorney general made a resignation statement containing a repulsive sentiment suffused with vanity. And in a weird addition to last week's jumbled sensibilities and sensitivities, the Public Broadcasting System announced that, because some station managers are afraid that the Federal Communications Commission's decency police might take umbrage and impose fines, two versions of Ken Burns's 14½-hour documentary "The War" will be distributed, in one of which four words of profanity will be removed. This is not because the words shockingly and wrongly suggest that soldiers in World War II sometimes used indelicate language (does no one remember what the F in the wartime acronym "snafu" stands for?), but because someone, somewhere, might be offended by that fact.and
And speaking of the tone-deaf, Alberto Gonzales could not even leave high office without advertising his unfitness for it. As he habitually has done, he reminded the nation that he has "lived the American Dream," which he evidently thinks is epitomized by his success in attaching himself to a politician not known for demanding quality in assistants. Gonzales then demonstrated how uncomprehending he is of essential American values. He said: "Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days."Well. His father married and had eight children—nine wonderful days, days even better, one would have thought, than any of the days his son spent floundering at the Justice Department. Furthermore, Gonzales's father had the fulfillment of a lifetime spent providing for his family. But what is any of that, Gonzales implies, compared with the satisfaction of occupying, however unsatisfactorily, a high office? This implicit disparagement of his father's life of responsibility and self-sufficiency turns conservatism inside out.
4 comments:
I don't often find the opportunity to agree thoroughly with George Will, but....
KRG,
I think that there are a probably more than a few people who feel the same way.
Jeez, I gotta read the whole thing, that was fantastic.
A question though. Where were all of these bold, honest and interesting conservatives BEFORE 2006? Now that Bush's a lame duck they feel like there's no harm in admitting that he's a fool who never had any business being president in the first place. We ought to hold their feet to the fire however and remind them of the many long years when they proclaimed Bush as some great Leader who descended for our unworthy sakes from the heavens. This applies to practically all of the Republican commentators, congressmen and talking heads of every sort. Why was I a voice alone among Bush voters who was able to say, "the guy's a moron and in a democracy he has no business buying his way into the presidency, but hey, he's still better than Kerry so I'm voting for him"? Why was everyone else rallying around to defend the absolutely indefensible. It pisses me OFF!
And the eleventh hour confessions do nothing to mitigate it. All that it shows is that all of these "maverick" senators and newspaper jerks don't have the excuse of stupidity. They knew that Bush was a moron and an incompetent all along but for electoral reasons they lied, lied, LIED about his supposed intelligence, understanding, staff and competence.
So yeah, it's nice to see that they can marshal some eloquence in elucidating the ills of the Bush and Co. but the more I actually think about it, who wants to hear drivel from these professional liars anyway? Even when they right?
mnuez
www.mnuez.blogspot.com
They knew that Bush was a moron and an incompetent all along but for electoral reasons they lied, lied, LIED about his supposed intelligence, understanding, staff and competence.
Could be.
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